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Humanism has mostly considered the question “What does it mean to be human?” from a Western perspective. Dabashi asks it anew from a non-European perspective, in a groundbreaking study of 1,400 years of Persian literary humanism. He presents the unfolding of this vast tradition as the creative and subversive subconscious of Islamic civilization.

Integrating forgotten tales of literary communities across Iran, Afghanistan and South Asia - at a time when Islamic empires were fracturing and new state formations were emerging - this book offers a more global understanding of Persian literary culture in the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges the manner in which Iranian nationalism has infilitrated Persian literary history writing and recovers the multi-regional breadth and vibrancy of a global lingua franca connecting peoples and places across Islamic Eurasia. Focusing on 3 case studies (18th-century Isfahan, a small court in South India and the literary climate of the Anglo-Afghan war), it reveals the literary and cultural ties that bound this world together as well as some of the trends that broke it apart.

Browne's famous work, first published in 1902, was the essential text on literary history in Persian studies for many years. As an overview of Persian literature from the earliest times until Firdawsi, it continues to be a valuable reference. Out of print for some time, it is now reissued as a library edition, in facsimile to capture the feel of the original edition.

Cultural writing. Literary criticism. Middle-Eastern Studies. A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN IRAN contains comprehensive research on the works of the leading figures in the field of literary criticism in modernist Iranian thought in the nineteenth century: Mirza Fath `Ali Akhundzade, Mirza Malkom Khan, Mirza `Abd al-Rahim Talebof and Zeyn al-`Abedin Maraghe`i. Inclusion of Ahmad Kasravi and Sadeq Hedayat was considered appropriate later due to some common aspects of critical attitude to the predecessors. These criticisms were the first seeds of modern literary criticism sown in the field of social and political life in Iran. Parsinejad is well-known to researchers in the field of Iranian studies. The publication of this book is useful in familiarizing readers with one of the most crucial aspects of progressive and critical thought in the Iranian modern era.